It should come as no surprise that CED’s annual Tech Venture Conference featured an array of companies offering business software solutions. But this year, a handful of companies pitched software focused on food.
More specifically, the software offerings promise to give information and insight about what people are putting in their mouths.
In the medical realm, many pharmaceutical companies are developing “personalized medicine” treatments. Such treatments match medicine to patient based on the genetic predisposition a person has to respond to a particular medicine. Personalization comes as modern health care produces more information and technology finds new ways to analyze that data, much of that information genetic. But food is also part of this big data revolution and at least three Triangle startups are aiming take advantage of the copious food and nutrition data that is becoming available.
- Panacea Solutions
Research Triangle Park-based Panacea Solutions is developing what could be described as personalized nutrition. The array of commercially available nutritional supplements offer consumers no way of knowing how well they can work for any one person. Panacea has developed a way to make nutritional supplements tailored to an individual’s needs.
Vice President and co-founder Staton Noel, a 20-year veteran of GlaxoSmithKline, argues that the personalized medicine comparison is an imperfect one. Right now, so-called personalized medicines are not tailored to an individual. Pharmas make these drugs for a smaller patient group who show a genetic predisposition to respond to a particular treatment. But Panacea’s supplements will be personalized.
“We’re making it especially for you,” Noel said.
Panacea has a proprietary manufacturing process for its supplements. Personalization comes from information that a user enters into the company’s software, such as age, weight, body mass, health history and fitness goals. The software compares that information against the databases of Natural Standards, an independent body that collects evidence-based research that can accessed by health care providers, insurers, manufacturers and consumers.
In time, Noel says Panacea could produce supplements based on an individual’s genetic information.
Once Panacea’s system calculates the ideal nutritional mix, the company’s proprietary process can produce the supplement, which comes in the form of a gel. Even the flavors can be customized to an individual’s preferences. Berries, peanut butter and chocolate and caramel are among the available flavor options.
Panacea’s nutritional supplements are not yet commercially available. They are not therapeutic drugs so they don’t need Food and Drug Administration approval. But the company is still doing testing – market testing of the gels and flavors along with development of its commercialization strategy. Noel said that one commercialization option could be partnerships with fitness clubs, whose clients are one of Panacea’s targets. But Noel said the gels could also be useful for the elderly or anyone who has trouble swallowing a vitamin tablet.
For now, Panacea is seeking investment from angel investors. A series A round of investment would be needed for a product launch that could happen in late 2014.
- FoodLogiQ
Durham company FoodLogiQ is focused on food safety. Andrew Kennedy, president of the company, used his two-minute lightning round pitch to talk about the possible problems in a product that consumers eat every day: the cheeseburger. Somewhere along the supply chain, the cheese, the lettuce and the tomato could pick up some kind of contamination. And the burger itself might not be 100 percent beef.
“It could contain, for all we know, a horse,” he said, a reference to a food scandal in England earlier this year in which horse meat was discovered in processed beef products.
FoodLogiQ started in Canada as a Calgary company originally focused on data management supporting livestock tracking for the Canada cattle industry. The company now shares space in Durham with its parent company, Clarkston Consulting. FoodLogiQ provides its customers software tools that track food and agricultural products throughout the entire supply chain. The company says it is deploying its software with several “major brand owners” in retail and restaurants, along with a large third party logistics provider.
To date, FoodLogiQ does not currently have any outside investors. The company says it is cash flow positive and it is seeking between $2 million and $3 million that would be used for product development and marketing. And to save the cheeseburger.
- INRFOOD
Keval Mehta took to the stage with a box of French fries. It wasn’t a snack. It was an example.
“These fries are about two years old,” he said. “They look like I just picked them up this morning.”
INRFOOD has developed a mobile app that tells the user the nutritional value of a food product by analyzing the ingredients of that product. The Raleigh startup has a product database of more than 250,000 products as well as an ingredient database of more than 15,000 ingredients.
Like Panacea Solutions, INRFOOD also offers its users an element of personalization. The app can warn if a food or ingredient poses a medical or cultural concern to that user. The company says the analytics can also be provided to a nutritionist or health care provider for review.
Mehta says INRFOOD now has more than 65,000 users. In the last year, the INRFOOD app has won national acclaim. It was nominated among the top 25 apps at the Consumer Electronics Show and won the BlueCross BlueShield Challenge among other honors.
INRFOOD has been bootstrapped so far. But Mehta says the company is now looking to raise money to scale the company’s offerings. The app has been running in beta for the last 10 months. The company plans a full release in October.
